of twittering bird-calls in the old rectory garden. This year,
after her long, dreary winter in Carlsville, she looked out on the roofs
of the smoky little manufacturing town, and saw only red brick factories
and dingy houses and dirty streets. The longing for the spring in her
old English home lay in her heart like a throbbing pain. "Oh, papa," she
sobbed, resting her arms on the window-sill and laying her head wearily
down, "do you know all about it, dearest? Oh, if you could only tell me
what to do!"

A week before, her aunt, Belle Barnard, had said, in her sickly,
complaining voice, "Well, Mildred, I don't like to tell you, but I have
been talking the matter over with the girls, and they think that we
might as well be plain-spoken with you. Everybody thought that your
Uncle Joe was a rich man, and so did we till we got the business settled
up. Now we find that after the lawyers are paid there won't be enough
for us all to live on comfortably. At least there wouldn't be if it
wasn't for a small inheritance that Maud and Blanche have from their
grandmother, and, of course, they couldn't be expected to divide that
with you, and deny themselves every comfort; so I don't see any help for
it but for you to get a place in some store or millinery shop, or
something. We have to move in a smaller house next week."

The week had nearly gone by, and Mildred was growing desperate.
Unfitted for most work, either in strength or education, she scarcely
knew for what to apply, and went from one place to another at her aunt's
recommendation, feeling like a forlorn little waif for whom there was no
place anywhere in the world.

One afternoon she sat by her window, looking out on the early April
sunshine, trying, with the hopelessness of despair, to form some plan
for her future. "Why didn't I have a grandmother to leave me an
inheritance like Blanche and Maud?" she thought, bitterly.

Then her thoughts flew back to the day on shipboard, when she had heard
of the old house in Chester and the inscription in her companion's
wedding-ring. "And she told me to take that motto for my own," she
whispered through her tears. "'God's providence is mine inheritance!' If
it is, the time has certainly come for me to claim it, for I have never
been in such desperate need."

The few times that winter that Mildred had gone to any service, had been
in the church in the next block. Its gray stone walls, with masses of
overhanging ivy, reminded her